As Garcia, his emotions
characteristically easy to
discern, applied pressure to
McIlroy on Sunday, he reveled in
connecting with Hoylake fans.

Oh, Sergio. It’s been 15 years now. A decade and a half since that enchanting and gifted Spanish prodigy hopped, skipped and jumped along the 16th fairway at Medinah en route to second place behind Tiger Woods in the 1999 PGA Championship. An iconic image, it remains perhaps the most endearing moment of a controversial career, one in which a lot has gone down, quite apart from the 22 tournament wins around the globe and the six Ryder Cup appearances for Europe.

Among other things, we’ve had the flying shoe at Wentworth, the not-so great expectorating into a cup at Doral, the self-pity when that putt to win the 2007 British Open lipped
out and some spectacularly unsporting behavior down the stretch in the 2008 PGA. Let’s
not forget too, the long-held disdain for Augusta National and those clearly thoughtless but
nevertheless racially charged comments last year regarding the aforementioned Woods.